Sending a specific application traffic through VPN. Doable?

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tmelo

Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:47 am

Post by tmelo » Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:50 am
Hi,
I'm considering buying the software but I have a question:
is there any way to set up a VPN connection, but send only ONE SPECIFIC application's traffic through the VPN, while keeping web browsing, email, bittorrent, etc through the standard connection? I ask because my only use for VPN is for Papers, an application I use to manage scientific articles. To download full-text articles with it, I need to be connected via VPN to my institution, but when I do so my bittorrent stops, my emails aren't sent, etc...

Thanks,
T Melo

James

User avatar
Posts: 2313
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:27 pm

Post by James » Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:05 pm
Hi,

Well it's possible in theory. Viscosity can't "attach" itself to an application and only send traffic from that application, however if you know the address/s of the servers you are accessing then you can achieve this using routing.

For example, I assume you need to be connected via VPN so Papers can download the full-text articles from a particular database? If so, you can find out the IP address of the server for this database, and then direct all data to this address through the VPN.

Using PubMed as an example, we know it's address is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ (I'm assuming full-text download links point to the same server). We can get the IP address by looking up "www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov" (type "nslookup http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov" into the Terminal), which is 130.14.29.110. We can then instruct Viscosity to send all traffic to this address through the VPN like so:

1. Open Viscosity, open the Preferences window, and Edit your connection
2. Click on the Networking tab
3. Click the little "+" button to add a new route
4. Enter 130.14.29.110 as the Route/IP. Leave all other fields blank
5. Click the Add button. Then click the Save button.
6. Try connecting.

That's just a theoretical example. Actual addresses etc would vary depending what you need to access.

Cheers
James
Web: https://www.sparklabs.com
Support: https://www.sparklabs.com/support
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sparklabs

Everglow

Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:46 pm

Post by Everglow » Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:52 pm
Is there a way to tell Viscosity to IGNORE certain traffic? Can I exclude all traffic through a certain port i.e. 80? I just use the VPN for work, but it's quite slow and I really don't want to route all my traffic through it. The problem is that there isn't just one server that I'm accessing. I access work on a certain port but not a specific IP--is there a way to tell Viscosity to only take such traffic and to ignore the rest?

Love the app, it's wonderful!

mickymouse


Post by mickymouse » Thu Jan 22, 2009 3:30 am
James wrote:
Hi,
Using PubMed as an example, we know it's address is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ (I'm assuming full-text download links point to the same server). We can get the IP address by looking up "www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov" (type "nslookup http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov" into the Terminal), which is 130.14.29.110.
why do you have to find the ip? just typing in the address seems to work quite well.

James

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Posts: 2313
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:27 pm

Post by James » Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:37 pm
just typing in the address seems to work quite well.
Excellent point - typing just the domain name in will also work.

However you do need to be careful when doing this for internal domains, as depending on your DNS setup they may not resolve.

Cheers
James
Web: https://www.sparklabs.com
Support: https://www.sparklabs.com/support
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sparklabs
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